Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Any Successor of Putin Likely to Be a Dictator Unless Society Gets Organized, Pastukhov Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, July 12 – The current
attacks on Aleksey Navalny that suggest he will become a dictator if he manages
somehow to defeat Vladimir Putin reflect the utopianism of the Russian
intelligentsia and its failure to understand that anyone who succeeds the
current Kremlin leader is likely to be one as long as society remains atomized
and weak, Vladimir Pastukhov says.

The St. Antony’s College Russian
historian says that those who are now asking “Who is Mr. Navalny?” much as many
asked about Putin nearly two decades ago reveal more about themselves and the situation
in Russia than about the opposition leader in their commentaries and attacks (republic.ru/posts/84795).

“The
problem is that being by their nature politically impotent … the liberal opposition
constantly needs a political outsider: it first seeks him, then when it gets
him, it immediately begins shouting about rape. The cause of this behavior is
the impassable gap between ambitions and capacities, between aspirations and
reality.”

The
liberal intelligentsia in Russia,” Pastukhov continues, “lives by a utopian dream
about a hero who kills the dragon, takes power from him and then, on bended
knee, hands it over to the outstanding representatives of the Russian
intelligentsia (the best people)” in the country – in short that the victor must
share power with those who didn’t make his victory possible.

But that
isn’t how politics works and it isn’t how Navalny will behave, the historian
says. “Judged by his views, [Navalny] is a classical Bolshevik. His single goal
is gaining power. How and under what pretext he gets it doesn’t interest him.
Today, he is doing everything to help gain power and then he will do everything
that will help him keep it.”

That of
course is what every politician does, Pastukhov points out.

“To
accuse Navalny of seeking power is the same as accusing a predator that he
wants meat. This is his nature: he is ‘a political animal.’ That isn’t an
insult but rather a compliment because people who are otherwise do not achieve
success in politics.” The only ones who can compete with such people are other “’political
animals.’”

Unfortunately,
the liberal intelligentsia doesn’t include many of them.It is “too principled and too scrupulous. It
is above politics, it isn’t interested in it, and it doesn’t get involved with
it.” And thus, its members fail to recognize that what is possible politically
is given “not so much by the moral worth of the leaders as by the restraining
potential of society.”

Thus, the
problem isn’t Navalny’s proclivities, Pastukhov argues, but the state of the minds
of the Russian educated class, with its slavish mentality and inability to “unite
in groups of more than three and with its lack of desire to consistently do
something in order to achieve the goal it desires.”

“The antidote against a dictatorship
is in the organized force of civil society and not in the castration of the
leader,” he says. “If the intelligentsia so fears a new Putin,” then it needs
in the first instance to get organized and help society get organized as well
so that they and it will be factors to be reckoned with.

When someone asked Winston Churchill
why there was no anti-Semitism in England, the British leader responded “because
we do not consider ourselves more stupid than the Jews.”In like manner, Pastukhov says, “Navalny is
not frightening to those who do not consider themselves weaker than he and who
understand that it is possible to move against him in an organized way if
something goes wrong.”

“But if society feels itself weak,
then no warning letters will help. Any non-entity who comes to power [in such a
society] can become a dictator.”

Thus, “the queston is not whether
Navalny is bad or good and whether he has dictatorial manners or not and
whether he will become or not become another Putin. Rather the question is
whether in the real conditions of present-day Russia a refined liberal
Westerner could come to power” and not be tempted to become a dictator given
the weakness of society.”

“I fear,” Pastukhov says, “there are
no such chances.”

“In any case, Navalny cannot become
a second Putin” because Putin was and remains a product of specific historical
circumstances … Navalny will be a product of other historical circumstances,
also unique.” That doesn’t mean that he can’t become a dictator but it does
mean that he won’t be a dictator just like Putin.

That is because in such
circumstances, politics operates dialectically.The first “negation whatever it is always is one-sided and consequently
is incomplete … And only a little later, at the stage of ‘the negation of the
negation’ takes place the complete and final farewell to the past (its being
overcome).”

Whoever comes to power after Putin
be it Navalny or someone else, is “simply condemned to become a kind of
anti-Putin or a Putin inside out who will be infinitely far from the liberal ideal,”
Pastukhov says. In Russia, liberal democracy will emerge only after a long and
difficult past: it isn’t the starting point.

“In order to prevent or at least
soften the practically inevitable future ‘revolutionary’ dictator, an organized
force, capable of imposing its political will on any potential dictatorship
must be organized. If such a force within society is established, then
Navalnyor any other victor will be
forced to deal with it” rather than act without regard to its concerns.

But “if such a force doesn’t exist
in society, then no liberal incantations or appeals is going to help.”

What is especially worrisome just
now, Pastukhov says, is that some of the criticism of Navalny is contributing
the view among some Russians that Putin is the devil they know while Navalny is
one they don’t -- and that they would be better off to stay with the current
leader than try another.That will make
both Navalny’s task and the achievement of a better future in Russia far more
difficult.